Three Areas of Focus to Elevate the Customer Experience for All

Contact centers extend beyond just an IT support call center to include an area with a “density of interactions,” such as a billing team, nursing station in a hospital or sales associates on a retail floor, says Martin.

Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) solutions such as Webex Connect elevate call centers with artificial intelligence, voice bots, and improved audio and video clarity, says Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president/general manager as well as chief product and technology officer for Cisco Collaboration at Cisco. Interactions can be automated using natural language programming and natural language understanding. 

CPaaS platforms can also remove background noise during support calls such as other voices or ruffling papers, Dhingra says. Webex offers this feature on its meetings platform and in its contact center software. 

2. Contextual Data Analytics Enhances CX

Contextual data analytics enables personalized experiences in which an agent receives detailed information specific to customers. For example, it might help an airline know which airport customers fly out of, that they do not check a bag, and what meals they prefer, Dhingra says. All this information makes communications to change a flight easier. 

Customer service requests should be resolved proactively and quickly, Dhingra adds. That means not putting them on hold or making them repeat themselves. The context that data analytics tools offer can help avoid unneeded communication. 

“I think that data fabric and sharing of all the metadata associated with communications helps make an organization much more efficient,” Martin says. 

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can also provide this context on customer information. “The agent might know the most recent purchase,” Dhingra says. “The agent might know there was a delay in the order. All of those things, from a data analytics point of view, can help deliver a better, personalized experience.”

3. How AI and Automation Improve CX

When businesses use manual processes, customers can get frustrated due to slow workflows and an increase in errors. Automation can improve this productivity and reduce error risks. 

“When you talk to a human, that human will have more information to personalize the experience for you, because the AI can look at previous interactions, start to see patterns, start to predict what somebody might be reaching out about, and equip that agent to deliver a better experience,” Dhingra says. 

AI tools now listen in to voice or digital interactions, observe what is being typed and provide suggestions to agents on next steps, Martin says. 

Although customers get frustrated with bots at times and request a live agent, they are getting more efficient at helping with tasks that burn out agents. To improve CX using a bot, organizations must hand off a call to a human quickly after spending several minutes with a bot, Martin says. 

With the emergence of generative AI, contact center solutions can now add empathy to an interaction, according to Martin. For instance, once a gen AI tool for a bicycle brand learned that a customer was in a bike accident, it would say to the customer, “We’re sorry to hear you were in a crash, are you OK?” Martin says. 

Even so, as gen AI emerges to elevate CX, don’t expect it to replace humans altogether, Martin adds: “There's always going to be a place for a human in the system, but how efficient we can make that human, how productive, how happy we can make that customer, those are the questions to answer.”